These Twain Part 27

"I didn't give any orders. I haven't seen the d.a.m.ned servants and I haven't seen George."

She looked up suddenly:

"Then who moved the furniture?"

"I did."

"Who helped you?"

"n.o.body helped me."

"But I was here only a minute or two since."

"Well, do you suppose it takes me half a day to move a few sticks of furniture?"

She was impressed by his strength and his swiftness, and apparently silenced; she had thought that the servants had been brought into the affair.

"You ought to know perfectly well," he proceeded, "I should never dream of insulting you before the servants. n.o.body's more careful of your dignity than I am. I should like to see anybody do anything against your dignity while I'm here."

She was still sobbing.

"I think you ought to apologise to me," she blubbered. "Yes, I really do."

"Why should I apologise to you? You moved the furniture against my wish. I moved it against yours. That's all. You began. I didn't begin. You want everything your own way. Well, you won't have it."

She blubbered once more:

"You ought to apologise to me."

And then she wept hysterically.

He meditated sourly, harshly. He had conquered. The furniture was as he wished, and it would remain so. The enemy was in tears, shamed, humiliated. He had a desire to restore her dignity, partly because she was his wife and partly because he hated to see any human being beaten.

Moreover, at the bottom of his heart he had a tremendous regard for appearances, and he felt fears for the musical evening. He could not contemplate the possibility of visitors perceiving that the host and hostess had violently quarrelled. He would have sacrificed almost anything to the social proprieties. And he knew that Hilda would not think of them, or at any rate would not think of them effectively. He did not mind apologising to her, if an apology would give her satisfaction. He was her superior in moral force, and naught else mattered.

"I don't think I ought to apologise," he said, with a slight laugh.

"But if you think so I don't mind apologising. I apologise. There!"

He dropped into an easy-chair.

To him it was as if he had said:

"You see what a magnanimous chap I am."

She tried to conceal her feelings, but she was pleased, flattered, astonished. Her self-respect returned to her rapidly.

"Thank you," she murmured, and added: "It was the least you could do."

At her last words he thought:

"Women are incapable of being magnanimous."

She moved towards the door.

"Hilda," he said.

She stopped.

"Come here," he commanded with gentle bluffness.

She wavered towards him.

"Come here, I tell you," he said again.

He drew her down to him, all fluttering and sobbing and wet, and kissed her, kissed her several times; and then, sitting on his knees, she kissed him. But, though she mysteriously signified forgiveness, she could not smile; she was still far too agitated and out of control to be able to smile.

The scene was over. The proprieties of the musical evening were saved.

Her broken body and soul huddled against him were agreeably wistful to his triumphant manliness.

But he had had a terrible fright. And even now there was a certain mere bravado in his att.i.tude. In his heart he was thinking:

"By Jove! Has it come to this?"

The responsibilities of the future seemed too complicated, wearisome and overwhelming. The earthly career of a bachelor seemed almost heavenly in its wondrous freedom.... Etches v. Etches.... The unexampled creature, so recently the source of ineffable romance, still sat on his knees, weighing them down. Suddenly he noticed that his head ached very badly--worse than it had ached all day.

VII

The Sunday musical evening, beyond its artistic thrills and emotional quality, proved to be exciting as a social manifestation. Those present at it felt as must feel Russian conspirators in a back room of some big grey house of a Petrograd suburb when the secret printing-press begins to function before their eyes. This concert of profane harmonies, deliberately planned and pouring out through open windows to affront the ears of returners from church and chapel, was considered by its organisers as a remarkable event; and rightly so. The Clayhanger house might have been a fortress, with the blood-red standard of art and freedom floating from a pole lashed to its chimney. Of course everybody pretended to everybody else that the musical evening was a quite ordinary phenomenon.

It was a success, and a flashing success, yet not unqualified. The performers--Tertius Ingpen on the piano, on the fiddle, and on the clarinet, Janet Orgreave on the piano, and very timidly in a little song by Grieg, Tom Orgreave on the piano and his contralto wife in two famous and affecting songs by Schumann and also on the piano, and Edwin sick but obstinate as turner-over of pages--all did most creditably. The music was given with ardent sympathy, and in none of it did any marked pause occur which had not been contemplated by the composer himself.

But abstentions had thinned the women among the audience. Elaine Hill did not come, and, far more important, Mrs. Orgreave did not come. Her husband, old Osmond Orgreave, had not been expected, as of late (owing to the swift onset of renal disease, hitherto treated by him with some contempt) he had declined absolutely to go out at night; but Edwin had counted on Mrs. Orgreave. She simply sent word that she did not care to leave her husband, and that Elaine was keeping her company.

Disappointment, keen but brief, resulted. Edwin's severe sick headache was also a drawback. It did, however, lessen the bad social effect of an altercation between him and Hilda, in which Edwin's part was attributed to his indisposition. This altercation arose out of an irresponsible suggestion from somebody that something else should be played instead of something else. Now, for Edwin, a programme was a programme,--sacred, to be executed regardless of every extrinsic consideration. And seeing that the programme was printed...! Edwin negatived the suggestion instantly, and the most weighty opinion in the room agreed with him, but Hilda must needs fly out: "Why not change it?

I'm sure it will be better," etc. Whereas she could be sure of nothing of the sort, and was incompetent to offer an opinion. And she unreasonably and unnecessarily insisted, despite Tertius Ingpen, and the change was made. It was astounding to Edwin that, after the shattering scene of the afternoon, she should be so foolhardy, so careless, so obstinate. But she was. He kept his resentment neatly in a little drawer in his mind, and glanced at it now and then. And he thought of Tertius Ingpen's terrible remark about women at Ingpen's first visit.

He said to himself: "There's a lot in it, no doubt about that."

At the close of the last item, two of Brahms's Hungarian Dances for pianoforte duet (played with truly electrifying _brio_ by little wizening Tom Orgreave and his wife), both Tertius Ingpen and Tom fussed consciously about the piano, triumphant, not knowing quite what to do next, and each looking rather like a man who has told a good story, and in the midst of the applause tries to make out by an affectation of casualness that the story is nothing at all.

"Of course," said Tom Orgreave carelessly, and glancing at the ground as he usually did when speaking, "Fine as those dances are on the piano, I should prefer to hear them with the fiddle."

"Why?" demanded Ingpen challengingly.

"Because they were written for the fiddle," said Tom Orgreave with finality.

"Written for the fiddle? Not a bit of it!"

With superiority outwardly unruffled, Tom said:

"Pardon me. Brahms wrote them for Joachim. I've heard him play them."